Ballet/rhythmic gymnastics/dance

[Moonlightceleste]

DD1 has been doing artistic gymnastics for about a year. She likes it, but she isn't mad about it like DD2 is. She's now asked if she can start rhythmic gymnastics, which would be at a different gym. She has friends who do rhythmic from another activity which I guess is how she knows about it.

My perception of rhythmic has always been a bit like ballet only with more glitter and scary stretching. If I'm honest I was hoping to steer her away from the whole dance thing. Does anyone have a DD who does rhythmic/any experiences with it? Is it worth letting her give it a go or would something like ballet be better to start with? Reassure me this kind of thing isn't all scary teachers and having the right body, basically

I don't know about rhythmic but what about acro/ sports acro? It's pretty demanding floor gymnastics but done to music with a lot of dance elements as well. DD(7) does a two hour class and loves it.

Are you after recreational classes or something competitive?

Sports Acro is great fun, there is also team gym, trampolining, mini tramp, tumbling etc as well as rhythmic all within the gymnastics family.

Perhaps dancing or rhythmic would suit her more, if she wants to try it I can't see why you wouldn't let her (assuming logistically it is possible). If she isn't struck on artistic gymnastics then I think you need to try and find out what she doesn't like about it. If it is the apparatus then yes rhythmic, team gym or acro would be worth trying. If it is the time spent training then that probably wouldn't be much different. If she particularly likes floor and dancing around then rhythmic would be a natural one to try or moving across to dancing.

What is it about dancing that scares you? I don't think many dance schools or gyms nowadays are all about the right body type, not at recreational level as children anyway. Dance schools can be like that later on but the one my girls go to has a lot of very normal looking teenagers which I really like. There are also lots of different types of dancing she could try, it doesn't have to be ballet. She might really like tap or irish dancing for example.

How old is she? she might also just be wanting to do something different to her sister. If her sister loves gym and finds it easier than her then she might want to find something SHE can be the best in.

She's 6. She's doing 4 hours of artistic at the moment, she's on a development squad. The artistic would have to go or at least be cut down for her to take up rhythmic, she already does other activities. That said, she has asked to do everything she does and has lots of energy, she would happily do more if we let her and there were enough hours in the day! I think it might be about doing something separate from her sister, but equally she isn't as into artistic as DD2 is. She loves the floor stuff, likes everything else but she's not as crazy about it. She's never not wanted to go to gym though, but she is still happy to try rhythmic even though she knows it would mean cutting down on artistic.

I did a lot of ballet when I was a child and long story short I ended up with a lot of body image issues I still struggle with. I don't want that for her. But I don't want to stop her doing something similar if it's something she's going to love either. I've always thought rhythmic looked more serious and scary than artistic, but perhaps that's me projecting my own ballet teacher onto it!

ah ok - I can understand where you are coming from then.

Well Rhythmic in my experience isn't that dissimilar to the dance world in terms of being stick thin - in fact personally (as an ex gym coach - not rhythmic though) I would say it is worse but having said that I haven't worked in it for many years so perhaps that has changed too.

Sports Acro is great fun and because they work in pairs and trios it can be more sociable in some ways. Perhaps ask her gym club what they think.

4hrs at the age of 6 sounds quite a lot but mine do the same of dancing I suppose.

could you manage to let her try it, perhaps do both for a trial period and then she chooses? As long as they know from the start that it is for 2 weeks and then they have to decide I think most children are ok about then stopping something.

My youngest was in a development squad for rhythmic, but gave it up to concentrate on dance.

Her gym club was very good, producing girls in the British squad...

I have to say over my daughter's time in RG, I never heard anything about weight or diet... As far as I know there's no weighing or weight issues at my daughter's club, and as I say, they're a fairly heavyweight rhythmic club.

But back to your DD. Like your DD, my DD started in artistic squad, moved to rhythmic then gave up for dance. We found the hours to be less in rhythmic (even though it was at a higher level - in artistic she was only doing regionals, many of her old rhythmic squad mates are now off to English championships this year). I was told it's because rhythmic gymnasts mature later. That was a bonus .

However, if it's done seriously, there's one hell of a lot of conditioning, so I would ask how much does your daughter enjoy conditioning? My daughter found it tedious, messed around and eventually gave up. At Rec level, there's not a lot, but my daughter could spend up to an hour just conditioning, doing lines and ballet practise. At that point, she was 7 and training 6 hours a week. She's quite a fickle little thing, and so prefers the faster turn around of dancing. It suits her personality more.
Hth

Well she tried a rhythmic class yesterday and loved it! I've signed her up for the next few weeks so we'll see if she still likes it then, but at the moment she thinks it's great. She has the option of also doing ballet at the rhythmic gym but we're going to see how the actual rhythmic goes first, she will need to drop down on artistic hours if she wants to do that. Thank you for your experience Kikla, that's really helpful. More nights off ferrying the DDs around is definitely a bonus!

Nonicknames* we do have an acro club near us but she would have to drop artistic as they clash. I wonder if she would actually prefer it though as it's the tumbling she really enjoys in artistic. And the stunts look fun. I will suggest it to her!

well she is still young so plenty of time to try different branches of the sport